


Landslide

by dreamkiller



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Black Character(s), Canon Character of Color, Drunken Shenanigans, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Feelings, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Humor, Idiots in Love, LGBTQ Character of Color, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Original Character(s), Pining, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Pre-Poly, Romance, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2020-05-12 21:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19237708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamkiller/pseuds/dreamkiller
Summary: “I’m sorry” Draco said. He dabbed at his mouth from where he’d almost spat out his drink. “Did I just hear you say that you have a boyfriend?”





	1. Chapter 1

Blaise was fucking with him. That was Draco’s first assumption. The Blaise Zabini he knew was entirely unsentimental – he got uncomfortable even when exchanging Christmas cards – and he had never been in a relationship with anyone for more than one month.

“I’m sorry” Draco said. He dabbed at his mouth from where he’d almost spat out his drink. “Did I just hear you say that you have a _boyfriend?”_

Blaise barely even rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a prat, Draco.”

“I think my hearing must be betraying me. You’re telling me that _you_ , Blaise Zabini, are in an actual committed relationship.”

“That’s what I said” Blaise said sharply. He was trying really hard to be patient, Draco could tell, but his fingers were twitching against the table.

“Oh my God” Draco said. “Oh my _God._ Merlin. This is—a _boyfriend._ You. When did this— _how_ did this…? I thought you were, you know, allergic to monogamy.”

“Well it hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park” Blaise said stiffly. “It’s taken some… getting used to, I’m not going to lie. But I want this to work, hence the, you know, telling you. I’m trying to be serious about this.”

And he was, that much was true. Blaise was rarely serious about anything. Cynical, sure, and always vaguely droll, but never _serious._ The fact that he wasn’t cackling along with Draco about the absurdity of the situation was, in itself, indication of his sincerity.

The realisation sobered Draco immediately.

“Oh” Draco cleared his throat with a cough, and when that didn’t seem to rupture his speechlessness, he said again, “ _Oh._ ”

Blaise took a sip of his cappuccino. He looked just as uncomfortable as Draco felt. “Yeah.”

“Right. Well, then. Who’s the lucky guy?”

Blaise looked down but Draco didn’t miss it. The tiniest hint of a fond smile. _Fuck,_ Draco realised. Blaise was being serious. He genuinely _liked_ this person.

“Well, that’s kind of the thing” Blaise said, and if Draco didn’t know him better, he would say that Blaise looked _embarrassed_. “Promise you won’t overreact.”

“Overreact?” Draco repeated, outraged. “Why would I overreact? When have I ever overreacted in my entire life?”

“Swear it, Draco” Blaise said, and he stuck out a pinky finger which, Draco noted, was both petty and juvenile since Blaise knew full well of Draco’s loathing for making promises.

Draco took said pinky with a begrudging sigh.

“Fine, I swear. Merlin, just spit it out already.”

Blaise took a deep breath and when he answered, it was with the exact same tone of wonder and awe that came from just about every wizard’s mouth that had haunted Draco ever since his very first day at Hogwarts.

“It’s Harry Potter.”

Draco blinked. “Where?”

He even looked around as if said bumbling fool might have stumbled into their vicinity. It wouldn’t have been entirely out of the realm of possibility; Draco had heard, from various sources, that Potter had retreated back into the Muggle world after the war, which made sense to Draco, since Potter practically _was_ one.

Still, that was one run-in that Draco could gladly do without. He hadn’t seen Potter since the war and he didn’t plan on changing that any time soon.

He turned back to Blaise to find him watching him in a mixture of impatience and amusement.

“ _No_ ” Blaise said with a sigh, “It’s Harry. He’s who I, uh.”

Draco stared at him.

“Harry and I are together.”

It took a few moments for the words to sink in but when it did, the anger welled up in Draco before he could stop it. It was something he’d been working on. _Therapy_ , at both his mother and Pansy’s insistance, even though Draco had initially shared his father’s sentiments that paying somebody to listen to you emote for a weekly hour session was a silly Muggle thing. Despite that, the regular meetings had helped. Draco no longer had nightmares every night and he hadn’t got into any physical alterations with anyone for at least a month.

But there were still moments, like now, that the rage just seized him. It was a bitter, palpable thing. It left an acidic taste in his mouth. Draco was up out of his seat, ready to stalk out of the café, before Blaise even had a chance to put down his drink.

“Just so we’re clear,” Draco hissed, “this is not me overreacting. This is a perfectly acceptable reaction to finding out that my best friend has been fucking my childhood nemesis behind my back.”

“Draco…” Blaise sighed.

“ _Just so we’re clear!”_ Draco hissed, and with that, he was gone.

 

#

 

Blaise turned up at Draco’s door three days later. Draco hadn’t necessarily realised it had been three days, having spent most of the time sulking in his pyjamas and devouring inhuman amounts of ice-cream while watching terrible reality shows about brainless, wealthy American muggles, but three days it was.

Draco wasn’t entirely surprised when he opened the door to find Blaise there. After all, Blaise always came back. Even when Draco had done the worst thing imaginable, there he was. Three days? That was nothing compared to the length that some of their arguments had lasted.

When, for instance, Draco had picked Pansy to go with him to the Yule ball over Blaise, they didn’t speak for a week. When Draco accidentally broke Blaise’s mother’s hideous vintage Dragon vase, the one that had supposedly been passed down through generations of Zabini’s, it was eight days before Blaise finally returned his owls. When Blaise got spectacularly drunk that New Year’s and accidentally confessed his supposed love for Draco underneath the fireworks and Draco’s response had been to laugh, embarrassed – well, Draco lost count of the weeks he spent without Blaise that time. Still, Blaise had come back to Draco then, and he’d come back to Draco now. It was just how they worked.

“You look pitiful” Blaise said, when Draco opened the door.

“Fuck you, so do you” Draco said, instinctively. They both knew that was entirely untrue. Blaise, as always, looked like he’d stepped straight out of a high fashion modelling campaign. Draco, on the other hand, had a Nutella stain on his dressing gown.

Blaise didn’t say anything at first. He just took off his coat and hung it up, the whole time gazing around Draco’s messy flat in silent judgement, somehow managing to convey every plainly bitchy thought that undoubtedly entered his mind with just an arch of his eyebrow. Eventually he turned to Draco, took in his scruffy appearance with one sweep of his eye, and sighed.

“I’ll make lunch” he announced, and stalked to the kitchen before Draco could protest.

“You know, I don’t need you to look after me” Draco called after him, though he of course ended up following on his heels, watching as Blaise routinely started pulling things from cupboards. Draco rarely cooked. In fact, since Blaise was usually the one whipping them up meals and filling his fridge with fresh meat and weird fruits Draco had never even heard of, Draco hardly even knew the way around his own kitchen. He was not, however, about to admit that to Blaise.

“Could have fooled me” Blaise said snippily. He was still angry, that much was obvious. Draco didn’t blame him, really. Now that his own anger had subsided he was beginning to realise that perhaps storming off like he had probably wasn’t the most mature way of handling things.

“Look—” Draco started, but Blaise spun around before he could start.

“No _you_ look,” he snapped. “You’ve been a complete prick, Draco, and you owe me an apology. I fucking— I opened up to you, which you _know_ is not something that I necessarily find _easy,_ and you— you stormed off, like a prissy little child! Do you know how embarrassing that is? The barista tried to give me a cappuccino on the house, Draco. Out of pity. As if I couldn’t afford my own fucking Pity Cappuccino.”

Draco sighed. His shoulders slumped a fraction.

“You’re right.”

“What?”

“I said you’re right. I’m sorry. I was a prick, and I don’t blame you if you never want to open up to me again after that. You just— you took me by surprise, is all. You know I don’t take surprises well. But you’re right, and I’m sorry for how I reacted.”

Blaise stared at him silently for a few moments, as if weighing the sincerity in his words. After a moment, he must have accepted that Draco wasn’t actually trying to take the piss, because he exhaled a fraction.

“Well” Blaise said, sounding almost put-upon at how quickly this had all been resolved. Draco had always suspected that Blaise secretly liked being mad at him. “I have to say, I didn’t think it would be that easy. Usually you’re much more of a stubborn arsehole when you’re wrong.”

“For the sake of reconciliation, I’m going to opt to ignore that.”

Blaise turned back to the oven with a roll of his eyes, but Draco caught the tiniest hint of a smirk. Draco knew that meant he’d been forgiven.

“So” Draco said, after a beat. Blaise had turned on the frying pan, and was now methodically dicing up some vegetables that Draco didn’t even know he’d had in his fridge. “When do I meet him?”

“Meet who?”

“Don’t be obtuse, Blaise. Your—“ He still couldn’t quite bring himself to say it. “Potter.”

Blaise, thankfully, didn’t call him out on it.

“Meet him?” Blaise scoffed. “We’ve known him since we were eleven. He sat behind us in Potions for five years.”

Draco waved a hand, dismissively. “I mean re-meet him, in the context of being my best friend’s— you know. Rather than as my sworn childhood nemesis.”

Blaise turned to eye him sceptically. Draco could tell that he was uncomfortable; he always got weird when Draco outwardly acknowledged the fact that they _were_ actually best friends and not just two people that had coincidentally spent the majority of their free time together since childhood.

“You mean it.” It wasn’t quite a question and Draco was glad, because he wasn’t sure he could have answered.

Instead, Draco gave a vague shrug. Blaise sighed again.

“Friday, then” Blaise said decisively. “I’ll cook.”

“And I’ll bring wine.”

“Good,” Blaise said. “Because we’re going to need lots of it.”

 

#

 

Draco could hear squabbling on the other side of the door for a good five minutes before he finally knocked. He knew it was five minutes because he watched the clock the entire time; he didn’t want to make it awkward by interrupting what was clearly a heated argument, but more than that, he was genuinely curious to see who would win in the battle of wills between Blaise and the stubborn headed Gryffindor.

After a while he got tired of holding his Waitrose brand red wine and knocked, three times, as was tradition.

When Blaise opened the door he was wearing a floral printed apron and had flour on his cheek. There was music playing from further in the flat. It was almost nauseatingly domestic.

“You know, this building has very thin walls” Draco said by way of greeting.

“I’m aware” Blaise said with an almost terrifying smile as he ushered him inside. “It’s the only reason I’m not murdering you right now. The neighbours have very good hearing and I’m far too pretty for Azkaban. You’re late.”

“Well” he said slowly. “I didn’t want to interrupt, it sounded heated in here.”

As he entered, he found himself looking around for any signs of The Gryffindor. That was what Draco had taken to calling him mentally; he found that the situation was much more tolerable if he mentally separated the idea of Blaise’s New Whatever with the irritating, clumsy menace that had plagued his childhood.

Disappointingly, nothing in Blaise’s flat had changed. Draco wasn’t quite sure what he’d been expecting — for everything to be painted, red and gold perhaps? To be greeted by a crowd of overzealous gingers? — but as he entered Blaise’s flat, he found that he was almost disappointed that The Gryffindor hadn’t made any outward drastic changes that Draco could see. Disappointed, yet also strangely relieved.

“I should hope so,” Blaise said, “it was your name I was slandering.”

Draco huffed out a laugh, then looked up to find Blaise frowning at him. He looked genuinely annoyed, which made Draco wither slightly.

“Look, Blaise, I’m sorry about being late. I know your feelings about tardiness, but you know what the Central line is like. And once again, I’m also very sorry about before, you know, when I threw a hissy fit. But… look! I bought wine! You can’t be mad at a man holding wine.”

Blaise’s eyes dropped suspiciously to the item in Draco’s hands.

“That’s from Waitrose.”

“Yes.”

“You bought Waitrose wine into my home.”

“…Yes.”

“I should hex you on the spot.”

“Please don’t” came an awkward laugh from behind Draco, “then I’d have to take you down the ministry and I’d much rather have dinner.”

Draco turned and found himself face to face with none other than Harry fucking Potter. The chosen one.

Draco cleared his throat.

“Hello… Potter” he said stiffly, and beside him, he felt Blaise roll his eyes.

Potter smirked, ever so slightly. There was a glint of something that looked irritatingly like amusement in his eyes.

“Hello Malfoy” he said right back.

Draco had to give it to him; Potter had come a long way from the scrawny, awkward teenager he’d been at Hogwarts. He’d grown into himself. His limbs were no longer disproportionate and gangly. He looked like he had some actual muscle definition and that he’d finally gone to a real barber rather than settling for letting one of the Weasley’s hack at his head with their hand-me-down wands.

He was actually dressed kind of well, too, though Draco suspected there was a good chance that might have been Blaise’s doing. As was probably the haircut, now that Draco thought about it.

“You look—” The compliment was right on his tongue, but it refused to come out. It was as if the two portions of his brain were incapable of working harmoniously; Potter, admiration. It did not compute. He waved a hand as if to convey the general idea.

Potter went on smiling. “So do you.”

He sounded so pleased with himself that Draco was instantly rushed with the memory of why he couldn’t stand him in the first place. He was just so insufferably _smug._

Draco was glaring before he could help it. Potter smirked right back.

Blaise took in the hostility with a sigh. “Yes, well, as much as I’m enjoying this stunningly awkward display of masculinity, I’m opening the wine. Make yourself at home. Or don’t. I don’t care anymore.”

He disappeared before either of them could reply.

*

The dinner went like this: Harry and Draco made a solid attempt at increasingly awkward small talk. Harry made a remark that was supposedly innocuous, yet perfectly architected to irritate Draco with unequivocal success; Draco snapped at him, Blaise glared, Harry smirked, rinse and repeat.

Blaise, the prick, had been slowly making his way through the wine throughout the evening, but every time Draco reached for it, he would snatch it away with a sharp look. Draco tried not to pout, but he didn’t see why he should be forced to endure the night sober.

It felt like hours before their plates were finally empty, and Harry stood up, keys jangling in his palm as he turned sheepishly towards Blaise.

“Babe, I’ve gotta go. Said I’d stop by the Weasley’s before it gets too late.” He turned to Draco with a self-deprecating smile, ran his fingers thoughtlessly through his already unkempt hair. “Arthur’s building an IKEA bookshelf, the muggle way. He’s been borrowing all my tools. It’s certainly been an experience.”

“Oh.” Draco said. This was the kind of futile information that he was never sure what to do with. “That’s. Nice?”

Blaise rolled his eyes a little, but when he looked up at Harry, there was something soft in his expression that Draco had never seen before. “Still on for tomorrow?” Blaise asked. His voice was a little husky from all the wine.

“Course,” Harry said. “I’ll pick you up in the afternoon. Dinner was perfect, by the way.”

“High praise from the Pot Noodle aficionado.”

“Alright, prat” Harry said, but he laughed brightly. He dipped his head to give Blaise a kiss — brief and chaste, entirely PG, a simple acknowledgement of his fondness — but Draco couldn’t tear his eyes away in fascination.

Of course, abstractly, Draco had known to anticipate kissing. Blaise and Harry were, of course, in a relationship and that included the expectation that they would be, at least occasionally, showing outward affection towards one another in Draco’s presence. But there was knowing something in theory, then there was being faced up close and personal with the image of his best friend mouth-to-mouth with his childhood nemesis.

The worst of it wasn’t what an undeniably devastatingly handsome pair the two of them made — though, honestly, that was just salt in the wound. No, the _very_ worst part of it, the part that left Draco digging crescent-shaped nail imprints into the creases of his palms, was that Draco knew firsthand what it was like to kiss Blaise.

It had been a while. Since that cursed New Year’s, actually, that had been the last time. Blaise had pulled him in at midnight and kissed the breath out him, the way he always seemed to know exactly how to. It had been different from any of their kisses before. There had been a finality to it that Draco hadn’t understood at the time.

That was almost a year ago, but Blaise’s kisses would be ingrained in Draco’s memory for as long as he had one; the soft, minty ones that he used to pepper Draco’s face with early morning before class, the slow, sweetly tantalising ones that came in dark corners of bars, that tasted cherry red like cheap tequila. The kisses in-between whispers, in-between laughter, in-between insults. He knew the soft feeling of Blaise’s bottom lip, the hum he’d make if you traced the line of his jaw, the way his eyelashes would flutter shut if you backed him against a wall.

He wondered, briefly, what kissing Potter would feel like.

Potter reached down and brushed a stray eyelash from Blaise’s cheek. “Hey look,” he murmured, low and just for Blaise. “Make a wish.”

Draco excused himself and escaped to the kitchen.

He was busying himself by loading the dishwasher — Draco’s least favourite past time, which Blaise knew all too well— when he felt Blaise’s presence in the doorway. Blaise watched him for a few moments, hands moving methodically in the sink, before he moved forward and planted himself in Draco’s line of sight. So, no avoiding then.

“Harry’s gone.”

“Oh.”

“He said to say goodbye.”

“All right.”

Silence. The clattering of sink water against dishes hung stiffly between them.

“So,” Blaise said, after a long moment. His voice was ice cold. “I thought we’d gotten over this.”

“Over what?”

Blaise cast him a look sour enough to turn him into stone. “Don’t bullshit me. You know what. So, what is it? Do you have a crush on him?”

“Do I _what_?” Draco's voice squealed involuntarily. “I do not have a crush on Harry Potter.”

“Please, spare me the wounded doe-eyes act. I’ve had to endure this whole pigtail pulling routine throughout the whole of our school life, I’m just trying to make sense of it.” He sighed, suddenly defeated. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I thought—I thought it would be different now. We’re adults. I thought it would be something we could all look back on and laugh about. But I suppose… fuck, I suppose I’m going to have to end things with him.”

“What? Blaise, no. Come on. That’s ridiculous. You _like_ him. You can’t end things with him.” Blaise just stared at him wordlessly. “He makes you happy.”

“And what about you?” Blaise asked, arms crossed. “You’re a twat, like, 90% of the time, but that doesn’t mean I want you to be miserable.”

“I’m not miserable!” Draco squeaked, probably an octave too high to be believable. Blaise quirked an eyebrow. “I’m _not”_ he insisted.

“Draco…”

“Blaise,” Draco tried again. “I mean it. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”

“You know I can’t be,” Blaise said, serious all of a sudden. It was the wine, Draco realised. It had turned Blaise’s mouth a distracting shade of pink, and now it was making him loose-lipped and emotional. Fuck. This was all Potter’s doing. “Not if you’re not.”

Something swooped in the depths of Draco’s gut, something he couldn’t quite name.

“Well, likewise” Draco said stiffly, and it was unfortunately true. “And I don’t— whatever you think it is that’s happening, it’s not. I’m happy for you. Really. And I don’t, _Merlin—_ I do not have a crush on your boyfriend. Christ.”

Blaise closed his eyes for moment, head titled back, like he might’ve been praying. Draco watched him. Like that, he almost looked like he could have been carved from Grecian marble.

“That’s the first time you’ve said it.”

“What?”

“Referred to him as my boyfriend” Blaise said. His eyes scanned Draco’s face searchingly, and Draco tried not talk balk under the heat of it. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“Well,” Draco said stiffly. “We are in uncharted territory here. It’s still a little weird for me.”

“You and me both” Blaise snorted. Draco laughed, and some of the tension alleviated.

“I’m drunk” Blaise announced after a long moment. “And tired. I’m probably just being dramatic.”

“You, dramatic? Never.”

“Fuck off” Blaise said, but there was a smile there. “You’re staying over."

It wasn’t a question. Blaise rarely asked questions; mostly he made declarations and people agreed simply because he was Blaise Zabini.

“I suppose” Draco shrugged.

“Good,” Blaise said. Draco didn’t really know what that meant, but he was tired and it seemed easier not to dwell on it. “Let’s go to bed.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which friendships are, somewhat reluctantly, made.

Draco had been expecting a call from his mother, so he wasn’t paying attention when he swiped “answer”.

“Question, why do Muggles _insist_ on putting avocado in everything, like it isn’t the Boris Johnson of vegetables?”

“Malfoy?” An unfamiliar voice answered.

Draco blinked and pulled the phone away from his ear to check Caller ID. It wasn’t a number he had saved to his contacts, so. Great. This was about to be embarrassing. “You’re not my mother” Draco said accusingly.

“I see that all those divination classes are finally paying off,” the voice answered.

Draco had been weaving through the aisles of Tesco, arms laden with microwaveable ready-meals, but he stopped momentarily to glare at his phone.“Who is this?”

“Oh,” the voice said, with a chuckle too amicable to be from anyone in Draco’s immediate social circle. Draco was immediately suspicious. “It’s Harry. Harry Potter?”

Draco resisted the urge to throw his phone across the aisle. “Of course it is,” Draco said, because that was just the kind of day he was having. “Why is it that I never get a call from, I don’t know, Beyoncé? Or Jake Gyllenhaal? Or Tan France from Queer Eye?”

Harry, to his credit, didn’t sound deterred. “Are you this warm to everybody that rings you, or am I just special?”

“I suppose you just bring it out of me, Potter” Draco said. He wasn’t lying. Without Blaise present to hold back the reins, Draco’s claws were in the mood to slice extra deep. There was just something particularly satisfying at sniping at Potter. He seemed to trigger Draco’s fight or flight responses.

In all honesty, he had only seen Potter once or twice since that first dinner, and mostly it was just in passing. He’d expected to have to deal with Harry as a more permanent fixture in his life, but conveniently Blaise had somehow managed to perfectly orchestrate his time so that the two of them never ended up in the same place at the same time. “So, tell me, why is that you’re gracing me with this phone call again?” A pause. “And how exactly did you get my number?”

That second part suddenly seemed extra important, and Draco actually paused where he was pushing his trolley down the biscuit aisle.

“I swiped Blaise’s phone while he was in the bathroom. I keep telling him he needs a longer passcode.”

Draco scowled at his phone. “Well that’s highly invasive.”

“I wanted to talk to you about his birthday.”

Draco sighed. He had a feeling that this was where this was going. “Well,” he said. “OK then. Talk.”

“I want to throw him a surprise party.”

“Blaise hates surprises.”

“I know. That’s why he already knows about it. He’s already picked the venue and the food. It’s just the date I’ve kept a secret. He told me to talk to you about the guest list because, quote, ‘Draco is the only person who knows which members of our social circle don’t make me want to perform an unforgivable curse on myself.’ Oh, and the cake too, but I’ve got that bit covered.”

“You do?” Draco grimaced.

“There’s this cute little bakery in Covent Garden. Blaise and I went there on our first date. Blaise brought this delicious raspberry cupcake that he always goes on about, but they only make them around Easter. I rang them up, talked them round a bit, and they’re going to make a big version.”

“Oh” Draco felt a little off kilter. “That’s actually— that’s very thoughtful.”

“Thanks” Potter said. He didn’t even seem to be taking the piss. “So you’re in?”

Draco tried not to bristle. “For my best friend’s birthday party? Of course I’m in.”

“Great,” Harry said. “So, tomorrow at 8, my place? We can start working on the guest list.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Draco said. “It’s a guest list. Can’t I just send you over some names? We don’t need to do it— you know. In person.”

Harry seemed to be expecting this response, because he made an irritatingly empathetic _hmming_ sound. “Thing is, the printer for the invitations needs the names and addresses finalised this week if we’re going to get them out in time. We’ll need to get the capacity down to a reasonable amount; I know you’re going to have _feelings_ about who we can and can’t invite, so I figure it’s probably just quicker if we do it in person, rather than back and forth over text.”

Draco gave a begrudging sigh. He had actually been intending to owl the list over, since texting Potter seemed far too friendly for Draco’s liking. Potter’s logic was sound, though. Even if there was something irking about his tone.

“What do you mean by _feelings?”_

“Draco,” Harry sounded exasperated, but there was laughter there, a little, in the edge of his voice. Were they actually getting along? The thought made Draco highly uncomfortable. “Do you need me to ask nicely, ‘cause I’ll beg if you want me to.”

Draco was suddenly glad that this was a phone conversation, so that Potter couldn’t see the flush of his cheeks. “That’s not necessary” Draco said. “Fine. We’ll do it your way. Just— send me your address.”

 

#

 

Draco wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting Potter’s place to be like, but it certainly wasn’t this; a small, two-bedroomed Georgian terraced in Dalston, a short walk from the station. It was, undeniably, very Potter: a little chaotic, but warm and homey and comfortable. It looked well lived in. It looked loved.

“I thought you were still inhabiting Grimmauld Place” Draco said, as he stepped inside and slowly looked around. Potter absentmindedly took his coat for him, and Draco wondered if he did that for Blaise, too, when he came over.

“Nah,” Harry said. “Too many memories. Still technically own it though, pop in on Kreacher occasionally to make sure he hasn’t burnt the place down.

“Wouldn’t put it past him,” Draco said.

“Yeah,” Harry snorted, “me neither."

There were photos — still, non-moving, muggle photos — everywhere, of the Weasley’s, of Granger, of just about every Gryffindor alumni that had plagued Draco’s childhood. But more than that there were so many _things._ Sentimental knick-knacks and books and plants and art and records.

He couldn’t picture Blaise here, was the thing. Blaise, who had always been at home in sweeping, imposing manors with sleek, marble staircases. Did he curl up on Potter’s moth-eaten sofa? Flick through his DVD box sets of Breaking Bad?

“Not what you were anticipating?” Harry asked. Draco looked up to find Harry watching him speculatively.

“Wasn’t anticipating anything _,_ Potter,” Draco glared, which only made Harry smile, the prick.

“OK, Malfoy,” he said, “sure.”

Draco caught sight of a familiar cashmere jumper strewn over the back of the sofa, and ignored the flip of his stomach. It was Blaise’s, Draco had bought him it for Christmas.

“Blaise is always leaving his stuff everywhere,” Harry said, following Draco’s eye line. “I think it’s ‘cause he grew up having a maid constantly picking up after him, but honestly he’s a nightmare to live with.”

“Live with?” Draco asked sharply.

“Well— not yet. You know what I mean. He’s just a bit messy.”

Draco did know what he meant, was the thing, but like hell was he going to admit that, lest of all to _Potter_ of all people. What, were they going to swap their favourite Blaise stories? Bond over kissing techniques? Draco suddenly had the overwhelming urge to be anywhere but here.

“So, don’t get mad,” Potter said, pulling Draco from his thoughts, “but I did already get started on the list. Just a kind of rough idea to give us a head start. Here, do you want to—”

Draco snatched the paper out of Potter’s hands, and scanned through the names rapidly. “Ugh. No. No. _Definitely_ not. Merlin, Abigail Winter? Blaise hates her, he calls her The Evil Munchkin.”

“Really?” Harry’s nose wrinkled. “We bumped into her the other day in Notting Hill, he seemed so excited to see her. Gave her a kiss on the cheek and everything, kept going on about how much he’d love to meet up.”

“In Blaise talk, that means that he loathes her and if he ever has to see her again, he’ll gouge out his own eyeballs.”

“Right,” Harry sounded amused. “Of course.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Here, just hand me that pen. I’ll sort it out.”

They were quiet for a while as Draco worked. Harry disappeared briefly to put the kettle on, and then returned a little while later with two mugs and a packet of custard creams.

“You can make yourself at home, you know,” Harry said, because Draco was still rigidly standing in the middle of the living room, unmoving, as if he was islanded on a sea of lava. Harry pointedly settled himself on the sofa, feet automatically lifting to rest on the coffee table with practised ease. He was wearing mismatched socks. He was, frankly, ridiculous.

“Fine,” Draco muttered, and after a long moment, he set himself down, as far away from Harry as was physically possible on the tiny threadbare sofa. They sat in awkward silence for a few moments before Draco dropped the paper with a sigh. “You know, there’s an awful lot of Gryffindors on this list.”

Harry shrugged, easily. He was mid-way through dipping his biscuit into his tea; it broke in half and sunk to the bottom, subsequently ruining, in Draco's opinion, a perfectly good biscuit and a perfectly good cup of tea. Harry, of course, didn't even seem to notice. “Blaise likes my friends” he said.

“Does he like them," Draco questioned, "or does he _Abigail Winter_ like them?”

Harry’s eyes crinkled into a smile. He really was irritatingly handsome without even trying. “He likes them,” Harry insisted. Draco gave an involuntarily scoff at that. “He _does._ He and Hermione go shopping sometimes. Turns out they’ve got the same interest in weird, old books? And he came to watch the footy last week with me, Dean, Seamus and Ron. I think he had a good time.”

“Are we talking about the same Blaise?”

“About yea high? Intimidatingly good looking? Kind of mean?”

Draco frowned, automatically defensive. “He’s not that mean.”

Harry shrugged, easily. Everything was always so easy with him. “I like that Blaise is a little mean.”

Ugh _,_ Draco thought. That was insight into Potter’s proclivities that Draco Did Not Need.

“And now you look like I made you want to throw up,” Potter noted, though he sounded pleased with himself.

“It certainly wouldn't be the first time.”

Harry laughed, but then they were quiet aside from the occasion rustle of papers and Draco’s pen as it methodically scrawled it’s way down Potter’s terrible guest list.

“I’m not trying to take him away from you, you know” Harry said, after a long moment.

Draco looked up, startled. Potter had both his hands around a mug of tea, and he was looking at him with wide, sincere eyes from behind his glasses. Draco felt himself prickle with irritation. What was it with fucking Gryffindors and just _outwardly_ _emoting_ all of the time? Couldn’t they just bristle inwardly with barely constrained anger like normal people?

“Yeah well that’s nice and all,” Draco said stiffly, “but you couldn’t. Even if you tried.”

“I know that,” Harry smiled, and he didn’t even have the decency to sound threatened, the prick. “He loves you a lot. He worries about you.”

Draco felt himself squirm. Harry’s gaze was heavy on him. “He doesn’t need to.”

“ _I_ know that, but you know he’s a mother hen deep down. He wants you to be happy.”

“I am happy,” Draco grumbled defensively.

“OK,” Harry said lightly.

“I am!” Draco snapped.

“I believe you,” Harry shrugged. He sounded irritatingly sincere, was the thing. Draco wanted to scream. He didn’t understand how Blaise could stomach being with someone so _earnest_ all the time. It must have been exhausting. “You do seem a lot more settled these days. Than when we were at school, I mean.”

“I guess I am.” Draco shifted, uncomfortable. “I mean, you do too.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry huffed. “School was fucking terrible.”

For some reason, hearing Harry admit that lightened some of the weight on Draco’s shoulders.

“It was, wasn’t it?” Draco breathed. “I mean, it really was the fucking worst.”

“Just awful,” Harry agreed, and for some reason they were smiling at each other, like idiots.

“Whenever I feel shit about my life, nowadays, I think to myself, ‘at _least you don’t have to sit through Professor Babbling’s Ancient Runes classes anymore_ ’.”

“Fuck me,” Harry groaned. “I’d take dementors any day over that.”

There was a beat, and then, like a dam breaking, they were laughing. Real, gut-aching laughter, the type that Draco hadn’t experienced in a long time. Draco actually had to wipe the tears from his eyes.

“Hey,” Draco said, one he’d caught his breath. His cheeks were starting to ache from smiling so much. “You’re dating Blaise. You’ve got to have something to drink around here.”

Harry’s eyes were bright with mischief. “Do I ever,” he said.

 

#

 

One and half empty bottles later, Harry Potter was Draco’s new best friend.

“And then Neville— he finished his drink, and he fucking decked him!”

“He did not.”

“On my life! Swear down. Knocked out a tooth and everything. It was great. Blood everywhere.”

Draco took another sip of his wine. They’d long since abandoned the tea and moved heartedly onto a stash Harry had airily called “Blaise’s posh shit”.

“Huh,” Draco said, begrudgingly impressed. “Punching a Death Eater? I wouldn’t have thought Longbottom had it in him.”

“Neville?” Harry blinked in surprise. He was drunk. They both were, slumped against the back of the sofa. Harry's shirt was crumpled, and his hair was even more unkempt that normal. His arm was propped up, face cushioned into the palm of one hand, head cocked to watch Draco owlishly. The guest list had long since been abandoned to the floor. Neither of them had spared it another glance. “Course he does. He’s the best of us. Bravest person I know.”

Draco found himself smiling despite himself. “And it was a good punch?”

“Oh, the best. We all lost our minds, shouting all over the place. Blaise was there too, he was the one to suggest we take Neville to the hospital to check his hand. Surprise he didn’t tell you this already.”

Draco fiddled with the stem of his wine glass, shrugged in a way that he hoped was nonchalant. “Must not have come up.”

Harry hummed thoughtfully. His glasses were a little wonky, but he didn’t seem to notice. Draco fought the urge to reach out and fix them. “So you don’t talk about me a lot then?”

He was annoyingly astute, was the thing about Harry. It was bad enough that he was the fucking saviour of the wizarding world, he had to be _smart_ too.

Draco rolled his eyes. “Classic self-centred Gryffindor. No, believe it or not, Blaise and I don’t sit around braiding each other’s hair, gossiping about you.”

“We talk about you,” Harry shrugged.

“Oh fuck off.”

“We do. Blaise is always trying to convince me how funny you are.”

“Well that doesn’t sound like Blaise at all,” Draco said.

Harry laughed again. It was almost blinding to look at.

“ _There_ it is,” Harry pointed. He sounded genuinely thrilled. “You know, I think we should be friends.”

“What?” Draco blinked. That snapped him from his drunken stupor. His mind had to go back a few steps to take in the words. “Friends? We hate each other.”

“I don’t hate you,” Harry said instantly. He seemed to mean it, too. His brow was furrowed, thoughtfully. “How could I hate you? You’re the person I love’s favourite person. Oh, _fuck_.” He balked, his cheeks turning delightfully rosy. “Please don’t tell Blaise I said that.”

Draco raised his eyebrows. “Tell Blaise what? That you love him, or that you think I’m his favourite person?”

“Either,” Harry grimaced. “Fuck. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

Draco chuckled into his wine glass. “Sure, whatever Potter. Our secret.”

“Do you really hate me?” Harry asked. He didn’t sound offended. Just curious. Draco supposed, like himself, Harry wasn’t unfamiliar with being on the receiving end of people’s dislike.

“Maybe,” Draco said. Then, with a roll of his eyes. “I mean. No, not really. Not anymore.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Harry shrugged. “After everything.”

“We were kids,” Draco said. “Both of us. There was so much we didn’t understand. If I could go back—“

“Yeah,” Harry said. “Me too.”

They were quiet for a long moment. Draco looked down at his empty wine glass. He had, perhaps, been overzealous when accepting Harry's offer for another glass.

“So, it’s settled then. We’re mates?”

Draco pulled a face. “Please,” he said. “We’re acquaintances, at most.”

“No, see, I'm learning," Harry said, grinning. "In Slytherin talk, that means yes.”

“In Slytherin talk, that means pour me another glass, Potter.”

Harry smirked. “Sure," he said. "Whatever you say, Draco. That is what friends are for, right?”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little warning: if you're squicked by vomit, there is some of that in this chapter. Nothing too detailed, I promise, just drunken antics!

“Make a wish, Blaise.”

Blaise was surrounded by a sea of people, all of them well-dressed, intimidatingly good-looking and the legacies of generations of wealth. Categorically, Draco could have gone an entire lifetime without seeing any of them ever again. He could have gone the entire next three lifetimes without seeing them, in all honesty. But of course, it was Blaise’s birthday, and that meant enduring a torturous night of fake-smiling through anecdotes of summers in the Alps, rumoured boob jobs and intricate discussions of new dietary fads. 

“I wish—"

“No,” Harry cut in, pinching Blaise’s waist. They were all circled around the giant, glittering birthday cupcake, which looked like it would have been better fitted to an episode of _Bake Off_ , in Draco’s opinion. Harry was behind Blaise, chin hooked over his shoulder as they gazed down at the twenty-six sparkling candles together. There was something so innately intimate in the gesture that Draco couldn’t look away.

“You can’t say the wish out loud,” Harry said. “If you say it out loud, it won’t come true.“

Blaise rolled his eyes. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said, but he still indulged Harry in a few brief moments of silent wish-making, ignoring the coos from the crowd.

Draco did have to give it to Harry; the party had been a rousing success so far. _Instagrammable,_ he’d heard someone call it, which Draco supposed meant that it passed whatever unspoken hipster test that all rich people parties undergo. More importantly, however, was how Blaise hadn’t stopped smiling all night.

The party erupted into cheers as the candles were blown out, flashes from every iPhone in the vicinity making it feel like it was Bonfire Night behind Draco’s eyelids. Draco decided to use the distraction to slip away unnoticed, but before he could, someone deftly reached out to snag him by the wrist.

“Wow,” Pansy said, looking him up and down from head to toe. “This must really be fucking you up, huh?” 

Draco instinctively glanced over his shoulder to where Blaise and Harry were good-naturedly bickering over the best way to cut the cake.

“Of course not,” Draco said, doing his best to keep his voice even. “Why would it?”

Pansy flung her head back and cackled. She could be truly cruel sometimes, like a little girl plucking the wings off of butterflies. “Hmm, perhaps because you’re madly in love with both of them?”

Draco felt his cheeks start to warm. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

It might have been easier, Draco reasoned, if it had simply been the case of Harry and Blaise making out the entire night. If was just a matter of overzealous PDA, some uncomfortable public fondling or a nauseating pet name, Draco would have had cause to joke away the tension with disgusted, vomit noises that everyone could have joined in with.

Instead Draco had to watch, agonisingly, as the two of them subtly moved around the party in perfect tandem, always in orbit of each other, always touching, even if it was the briefest brush of their hands. They weren’t doing anything aside from existing with complete awareness of one another, as if they were two sides of the same coin.

Blaise was undeniably happy. He wore it like a halo. It was such a drastic change in him, that Draco was not entirely convinced that he hadn’t been body-swapped. His laughs came loud, his affections easier, he even walked with a little bounce in his step. It was, undoubtedly, the happiest Draco had ever seen him.

“Does it count as star-crossed, if it’s three-way?” Pansy asked, taking the olive from her martini and popping it between her lips thoughtfully. She was dressed, inexplicably, like an extra from _Cabaret_. Draco wondered if it was intentional and decided that it probably was. “Truly Shakespearean, by the way, I can’t wait to see how it all unfurls.”

“Nothing’s unfurling,” Draco wanted to scream. “And will you stop laughing? Merlin. It’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

“You know what, fuck you Pansy. I’m too tired for this.”

Draco went to stalk away, as was generally his custom, but once again Pansy snagged him by the elbow before he could escape.

“OK, _OK,_ sorry. Don’t leave, I promise I’ll stop laughing. Obviously you’re suffering, and I’m being very insensitive.” Draco glared at her. “I’m being serious! I _empathise_ with you. It can’t be easy, watching the two loves of your life making goo-goo eyes all night.”

“You sound like you’ve been watching Youtube videos on how to trick people into thinking you’re not a psychopath.”

“Is it working?” Pansy asked.

“Not remotely.”

Behind them, Harry popped open a bottle of champagne with as much finesse as only a Gryffindor could, and everyone cheered. Draco felt like he was suffocating.

“Hm,” Pansy said, thoughtfully. “I know a potion, if you want me to take it away. Black market, but it’s pretty safe.”

“ _No_ , Christ. I’m fine.”

“OK. Well. Do you want me to seduce one of them, so that you can fuck the other?”

She turned to cast her eyeball over the two of them speculatively, as if weighing her options. She seemed to be serious.

“No thank you Pansy, that’s quite alright.”

Pansy shrugged. “Suit yourself. They’ll probably end up getting married though.”

Draco sighed. “Yes.”

“They seem to be terribly in love.”

“I know.”

“And they make a very attractive couple. Potter got _hot._ Not as hot as Blaise, of course but, Merlin. If I wasn’t a lesbian.”

Draco sighed. He suddenly felt very tired, and conversing with Pansy felt like a twisted sort of unwitting self-flagellation.

“Are you finished rubbing salt in the wound? Because I’d very much like to leave now.”

Pansy’s eyes lit up. “So you admit, there _is_ a wound.”

“ _Pansy_.”

“Come and get drunk with me,” Pansy insisted. She rested her head against Draco’s shoulder. Her hair tickled his chin.

“I don’t feel like it.”

“Come _on._ You look pathetic, frankly, standing over here pining after not one but _two_ boys. Plus, I’m bored and nobody else here is good looking enough to deserve my company.”

“I’m really not in the mood.”

“Please?” Her voice lilted into sing-song. “There’s a guy over there that has been eyeing you consistently, the whole night. I don’t think it would take much to get him to go home with you. Maybe just give him an artful flash of thigh, that always works for me.”

Draco sighed. He had, in fact, noticed said guy standing by the bar, who was not exactly being subtle with his interest. He’d smiled at Draco earlier, and inclined his head ever-so-slightly as if in invitation, but Draco had balked, flushed with embarrassment, then pretended like he hadn’t seen. He’d been avoiding looking in his direction ever since.

“He’s not my type.”

“And what type is that? Uninterested? In a happy, monogamous relationship?”

Draco flinched.

“Draco, come _on,”_ she pouted. “You can’t leave yet, anyway. You’ll make Blaise sad.”

“That’s a low blow,” Draco said, because it was. Playing the Blaise card. “Fine, one drink. But you’re buying.”

“Oh honey,” Pansy laughed, “you think I look like this and pay for my own drinks?”

 

#

 

Two hours later, Draco was spectacularly drunk. At some point, Pansy had abandoned him for a terrifying looking tattooed girl, and now he was slumped alone on a bar stool, his 5th— no, possibly 6th drink in hand. Sam— no _Simon_ — the inoffensively cute guy from the bar, had gone to grab their coats.

Pansy had been right. Once Draco had struck up conversation, Simon had kept the drinks coming. He talked a _lot_ , largely about wholly uninteresting muggle things, like his opinion on the Liberal Democrats, or his career in web development, and since Draco’s number of drinks rapidly became directly proportional to Simon’s numerous tedious conversational topics, it wasn’t long before Draco was pissed off his face.

When Draco ended up suggesting that they go back to his place, it was mostly just to make Simon stop talking. It worked. Simon had blinked rapidly, threw his drink back and stuttered out an enthusiastic “yes” before scrambling off to get their things.

Draco was still waiting for him to come back by the time Blaise sauntered over, finally rid of his crowd of overzealous influencer friends.

“You’re a disaster” Blaise said in greeting. _Fuck_ , Draco thought, as he looked up from his empty cocktail. Blaise looked good. Well, he always looked good but he looked— content. Happy. He was glowing with it. 

“Your face is a disaster” Draco retorted halfheartedly.

Blaise cast him a look. “We both know that’s not true.”

Draco sighed, sadly. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

Blaise had a great face. Probably even Draco’s favourite face, if he really thought about it. Definitely top three at least. It was the type of face that should at least be on a billboard somewhere, Draco mused, if not carved into stone.

Blaise rolled his eyes and _oh_ — Draco hadn’t realised he’d said all of that out loud.

“You’re ridiculous,” Blaise said.

“And you’re _welcome,”_ Draco replied, and he threw back the very last dregs of his drink. He craned his neck to find Bar Guy, but couldn’t see him through the crowd. God, how long did it take to get some coats? How could he be boring _and_ slow?

“What happened to you new friend?” Blaise asked, following Draco’s gaze. There was something odd in his voice, but Draco was too drunk to dissect it.

“Who? Oh, Simon. He’s grabbing our stuff. He’s good looking, isn’t he? I can’t really tell, I’m too drunk. I think I have, like, vodka vision.”

“He’s good looking” Blaise agreed, uncharacteristically hesitant. “You’re leaving with him?”

“We’re gonna go back to mine” Draco hiccupped. He could feel the drink catching up with him and he felt suddenly and achingly tired. “He’s kind of boring but at least he seems to like me. That’s the part Pansy says is important. That, and he’s not, like, already in love, having cute birthday parties, or whatever.”

“What?” Blaise frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh,” Draco said. He hadn’t meant to say that part out loud either. He always lost his mind to mouth filter when he was drunk. “Well—“

“Bum a light?” Harry asked, appearing seemingly from nowhere and saving him from answering. Draco had never been so pleased to see him.

Harry was expertly rolling a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. There was something incredibly attractive about seeing the motion in his fingers, for some reason, especially without using magic; in his drunken stupor, Draco found even more difficult than normal to forcibly tear his gaze away.

Blaise sighed but after a beat he slipped the lighter from his own pocket into Harry’s. “Thought you were quitting?” He murmured, eyebrow arched. He seemed tense all of a sudden. His glow had dissipated a little. Draco knew he was to blame, but his intoxicated brain wasn’t coherant enough to be able to fumble backwards through their conversation and determine how. 

“I am,” Harry protested. “Socially smoking doesn’t count.”

“Uhuh.”

“Don’t pull that face, you know I’m trying.”

“Sure.”

“Hey, what’s wrong? You seem grumpy all of a sudden.“

“I’m fine” Blaise said.

“Blaise—“

“Oh,” Draco announced abruptly. There had been an odd feeling curdling it’s way through Draco’s stomach, and it wasn’t until that exact moment that Draco registered what it was. “Oh fuck, I’m gonna hurl.”

Both of their attentions snapped straight to him.

“ _O_ -kay,” Harry said swiftly. “Outside we go.”

Draco was shepherded through the crowds of hipster partygoers with military efficiency, Harry’s arm around his shoulder, Blaise expertly shifting people out of the way. They got outside just in time; as soon as the fresh air hit his face, Draco found himself bent over, retching.

“I think I’m dying” Draco said, once what felt like half of his insides were now splattered across the pavement.

“You’re not dying,” Blaise said placidly. He placed his coat — a sleek, expensive smelling leather jacket — over Draco’s shoulders, and leant forward to push back Draco’s fringe as Draco continued to heave up the six or so mojitos he had so greedily guzzled back. 

“Sorry,” Draco sniffled. He knew Blaise hated dealing with drunk people. His mother’s third husband had been a drinker, and the summer before he left, Blaise had all but moved in with the Malfoy’s in order to avoid him. “You should… you should go back inside.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Blaise said dismissively.

“We should really get him home” Harry said from beside them. At some point, he’d managed to acquire a glass of water and Draco took it from gratefully. It was only a small gesture, but something in the kindness of it, of them both standing outside in the cold with him when their own party went on inside, made Draco feel like he had suddenly been gutted. He wanted to crawl up and die.

“I’ve already booked an Uber” Blaise said, because he was intimidatingly efficient like that.

“My place?” Harry asked.

“It is closer.”

“No,” Draco protested. “No. Don’t.” _Don’t ruin your night because of me,_ he wanted to say. _I want you to be happy. Please don’t let me destroy it._

“I’m not leaving you by yourself, moron,” Blaise frowned. Of course he knew what Draco meant, without Draco saying it. He could always read Draco like a book. “Neither of us are. Besides, you’d probably choke to death on your own vomit.”

“Would _not_ ,” Draco spluttered indignantly, but it was completely undermined by the fact that he immediately started vomiting again. They both ignored him.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but a little while later he found himself sat on the curb of the road, leaning his head against a chest. He opened his eyes and discovered that it was Harry. Fingers were carding through his hair soothingly. Draco felt some of the tension leave his body.

“Oh, hey Draco, there you are.” Bar Guy — Simon — had appeared, Draco’s coat in hand. It was weird; Draco had sworn he had been better looking before he left. Now, standing next to Blaise and Harry, even in the dim streetlight, he looked kind of plain.

“Hi,” Draco said meekly, from where he was slumped against Harry.

Simon looked between the three of them unsurely. “Uh… you ready to get out of here?”

Draco instinctively went to stand up, but Harry gave him a little squeeze to stop him from moving.

“Does he look like he’s going anywhere?” Blaise asked flatly. He’d pulled himself to his feet at Simon’s appearance, and planted himself rigidly between them. Draco had to arch his neck to look around him. 

“Oh,” Simon said. Blaise had a good few inches on Simon, and Simon seemed hyper aware of every one.

“Uh, I—“

“We’ll take the coat,” Blaise cut in, razor sharp. Simon hesitated momentarily before realising that Blaise clearly was not joking. There was an awkward bumbling as he handed the jacket over.

Simon craned his neck to look at Draco. “Hey, before I leave, do you think I could get your—“

“Thanks Simon,” Blaise said pointedly, unmoving. “ _Bye_.”

Draco’s eyes had drifted closed, too sleepy to follow the conversation, but he felt Harry snort with laughter beneath him.

“Better go, mate” he heard Harry say. 

The next time Draco opened his eyes, Simon was gone.

 

#

 

“Uber’s here,” Blaise said, nudging him gently. “Come on, Sleeping Beauty.”

Draco didn’t remember how, but somehow he ended up in the back of the taxi, Harry and Blaise on either side of him. He slumped against a shoulder — Blaise’s, he realised belatedly, judging by the scent of him — and on the other side he found his fingers tangled with Harry’s. They were warm, and Harry’s thumb circled the back of his palm in a soothing motion.

“He’s not gonna puke is he?” The Uber driver asked, warily, from the front.

“He’s good,” Blaise said tersely.

“Because if he pukes, you’re getting out. There’s a fine for that, you know.”

“Mate, he’s _fine._ He’s just needs to get home and rest." Harry sounded annoyed, and Draco had to admit. He was kind of into it. He was usually on the receiving end of Harry’s temper, so he’d never really noticed that, from the outside, righteous anger looked good on him.

“Hey,” Draco grumbled. The fingers combing through his hair had stopped, so he grabbed the closest hand he could find and put it on his head to indicate the petting should continue. Blaise only hesitated a moment before yielding. Draco had to admit, it really _was_ nice; Harry’s fingers in Draco’s, Blaise’s hand in Draco’s hair.

“He’s like a kitten,” Harry said from his other side. “Is he always like this when he’s drunk?”

“Always.”

“It’s pretty cute.”

“Pretty annoying, more like.”

“Hey,” Draco yawned. “What… uh, what happened to Bar Guy?”

“He’s gone,” Blaise said. Draco didn’t think he was imagining the frost in his voice.

“Oh.” Draco wasn’t disappointed, exactly. It was hard to be, with Blaise’s fingers in hair. “He didn’t like me?”

There was a beat of silence. Draco looked up, thinking he might’ve said something wrong, but then Harry’s hand squeezed his fingers.

“Course he did,” Harry said. “We sent him away. Couldn’t send you off with some strange bloke when you were in this state.”

“Hm,” Draco agreed sleepily. “Well that’s OK. I prefer it here anyway.”

Harry’s laugh sounded genuinely delighted. “You’re sweet when you’re drunk, you know.”

“More like fickle,” Blaise corrected, but he sounded amused too. They were both smiling at him and Draco felt his insides warm. For precisely three seconds, that was, then he felt like he wanted to puke again.

“You smell good” Draco said, burrowing his face into Blaise’s shoulder again. Blaise always smelled good, and familiar. Like expensive cologne and rich leather and Draco’s childhood.

“Yeah, well you smell like puke” Blaise answered.

“Yeah,” Draco sighed. “But you love me anyway.”

“Don’t fucking remind me” Blaise muttered.

Draco drifted asleep to the sound of Harry’s laugh. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Incoming: angst

Draco woke feeling like a re-animated corpse already well into the depths of rigor mortis. It took him a few moments to register his surroundings. He was used to crashing at Blaise’s after nights out, but these weren’t the plush, expensive silk sheets that lined his bed. These sheets were a little scratchy, and there was a Quidditch poster on the wall directly opposite the bed. Draco tensed as the realisation dawned at him. He was at Harry’s. He was in Harry’s bed.

Blaise was curled on one side of him, head tucked into the nook of Draco’s shoulder, Harry was on the other, an arm draped lightly around Draco’s waist.

“Hey,” Harry murmured. Draco hadn’t realised he was awake, but here he was blinking owlishly at him. He looked different without his glasses on, his eyes looked an even more striking shade of green than usual. His hair, which seemed to have a mind of it’s own even on a good day, looked even more fluffy and dishevelled. Draco wanted to run his hands through it.

“Hey yourself,” Draco replied warily.

“You’re not gonna puke again, are you?”

“Fuck off.”

Harry smiled, bright enough to light the entire room and Draco felt his nerves start to niggle away at his chest. What was he _doing_ here, curled up in bed with the two of them? There was playing with fire, and then there was knowing what Harry looked like when he woke up in the morning, falling asleep with Blaise’s weight against his back.

Draco closed his eyes to try and replay the night before through his head, but found that it was mostly slurred fragments. He cringed to himself. God, he hoped he hadn’t done anything too awful.

Harry’s hand fumbled about on the bed side table until they came to his glasses, then he slid them on and frowned, taking in Draco’s expression. “Stop freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out” Draco protested.

Harry lifted his hand to Draco’s chest, felt where his heart was thudding a million miles a minute beneath his ribcage, and raised an eyebrow. It was warm, and Draco immediately felt some of the tension dissipate at the touch. “Uhuh.”

“Shut up.”

Harry snorted, and his eyes drifted over Draco’s shoulder to where Blaise was still slumped against the pillows.

Draco had expected to find Blaise still snoozing softly beside him, since he’d had always slept like the dead. Back before that New Year’s, before Draco messed everything up, Draco used to have to wake him up by crawling over him, peppering kisses all over his face, and then he usually could only be coaxed out of bed with the promise of coffee.

Blaise wasn’t asleep, though. He was wide awake, and watching the two of them with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Oh,” Draco said. “You’re awake.”

Blaise didn’t say anything, just continued to watch him speculatively.

“Sleep alright?” Harry asked, briefly leaning across Draco to brush his fingers against Blaise’s jaw. Draco tracked the motion as if it was on fire.

“Sure,” Blaise said. There was something odd in his voice, but before Draco could question it, his attention was snagged by Harry scrambling out from under the covers, apparently only wearing a pair of boxers. He was deceptively toned and he had — _fuck_ — tattoos lining his ribs. That just seemed unfair, somehow. 

“‘M hungry” Harry muttered, scratching his stomach and yawning. It shouldn’t have been attractive, watching him languidly make his way across the bedroom. “Anyone for food?”

“What?”

“I said, do you want breakfast?”

“Oh.” Draco didn’t know how he could be expected to form coherent sentences at a time like this. He glanced at Blaise as if for back up, but Blaise was still being suspiciously quiet. “Uh, sure. Please. Thank you.”

“Babe.” Harry had reached Blaise’s side of the bed, and he ducked his head to greet him with a kiss just under his jawline. Blaise hummed a little, softening and arching into the touch. “You want pancakes?”

“Mm.”

“Bacon?”

“Fine.”

Harry leant back to take in Blaise’s face properly. He seemed to have clocked that even through the usual morning brain fog, Blaise was not being his usually quick-witted, sardonic self. “You OK?”

“Sure.”

Harry didn’t look too persuaded, but after a moment, he nodded, accepting. “OK, fine. Be ready in fifteen. Don’t go back to sleep.”

The two of them watched him go in silence, and as soon as Harry disappeared through the door, Draco let out a bark of laughter. “Anyone else feel like they woke up in the fucking twilight zone?” He asked, turning to Blaise. “I mean, I know I’m hungover but what the _fuck_. Does he always walk around like that?”

He expected Blaise to laugh at the absurdity of the situation with him, for him to offer a dry, cutting comment dripping with his usual sarcasm, but his face was completely shuttered. Blank.

“Blaise,” Draco said unsurely. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

Blaise didn’t look at him. “Sure,” he repeated, for possibly the third time that morning, which pretty much indicated that he was absolutely not fine.

“Did I—“

“I’m going to get breakfast. Are you sticking around?”

Ah, so it _was_ Draco then. It had been a long time since Blaise had been on the receiving end of Blaise’s utter callousness, since it usually only reared its head when he was well and truly pissed. Petty sniping was one thing, sure, that was like blood-sport for the two of them, but this was another matter entirely. It was something Blaise had learnt from his mother, Draco was sure, this ability to wholly freeze someone out with absolutely no remorse. 

He sighed to himself. “Yeah,” he said, feeling much too hungover to deal with this. “I suppose I am.”

#

“We’re out of milk,” Harry announced upon their entry.

“Not it,” Blaise and Draco instinctively chorused. Draco instinctively turned to Blaise again, hoping to share laughter at their inherent sameness, but Blaise was still pointedly pretending like Draco didn’t exist.

Harry shook his head. “Bloody Slytherins,” he mumbled. He slid a plate full of delicious smelling fried food over to Draco, and then another to Blaise. “Fine, eat this, I’ll go but you both owe me, big time. And don’t think I’ll forget, because I really won’t.”

Draco waited until they heard the front door close after Harry to clear his throat, pointedly.

“So, last night,” Draco said. He watched Blaise poke his food around, silently. “Did you have fun?”

“Sure.” _Sure._ It might as well have been 'fuck you' at this point.

“Blaise,” Draco said carefully. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess by your subtle monosyllabic retorts that you’re mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you, Draco?” Blaise said, still not looking at him. 

“I don’t know… I can’t remember. The last thing I remember about last night was being in the back of an Uber.” 

“That’s convenient.”

“Blaise,” Draco sighed. “If you could just tell me what I did, I can apologise.” He paused. “Is it because I…” He didn’t know how to phrase it without damning himself completely. “I slept next to Harry?”

Blaise cast him a look. “You slept next to Harry because you kept trying to roll out of bed in your drunken stupor, and it was the easiest way to keep you from breaking your neck in the middle of the night.”

“Oh,” Draco said, flushing with embarrassment. “Well if it’s that I accidentally threw up on something then you can just forward me your dry cleaning bill, you know, I’ll just—”

“What was up with that guy from last night?” Blaise said abruptly.

“What?” Draco blinked. He was far too hungover to follow his thought process and Blaise’s stream of consciousness tended to give him whiplash even on a good day.

“The guy,” Blaise repeated. “From last night.”

It took Draco a few beats to even remember who he was referring to.

“You mean _Simon?_ ”

“I don’t know his fucking name. What’s his deal?”

“I dunno,” Draco shrugged, dumbly. “He was fit?”

“So that’s just something you’re doing now, then?” Blaise asked. He sliced viciously at the piece of bacon on his place. “With random muggles you meet at your best friend's birthday party?”

Draco raised an eyebrow. “So what if I am?” He asked. “What, you’re the only one allowed to hook up with people now?”

“Harry isn’t a _‘hook-up’,_ ” Blaise glared.

Draco faltered, ever so slightly. “I know that. That wasn’t what I—“

“That Simon guy is a prick. You know he used to go out with Marcus Flint’s little sister, and cheated on her for years? Everybody knew about it, apart from her. They say he's some kind of, like, wizard groupie. They ended up breaking up because he left her for another muggle he met in Spain. A little while after that, she checked into rehab. It was in the Daily Prophet and everything, I don’t know how you didn’t hear about this.”

Draco stared at him. “So you do know his name.”

“Oh, fuck you Draco.”

“I’m just _saying_ —” 

“You told me you were in love with me.”

Draco almost choked on his mouthful of food. It took a few moments for the words to register, and then he suddenly felt very nauseous all over again.

“Last night.” Blaise’s voice had gone eerily calm. “When you were drunk. We came back here. Harry left the room for, like, five seconds to find you a change of clothes. You kissed me, and you told me that you were in love with me. That you always had been.”

_Fuck._

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

_Goddamn shitting fucking hell._

“That…” Draco was speechless. “That doesn’t sound like me at all.”

“This isn’t fucking _funny!”_ Blaise snapped. His fork clanged against the table. 

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._

“I know, Blaise,” Draco said, frantically. “I know, I know it’s not.” He felt his palms start to sweat. He buried his face in his hands. This was so much worse than he expected.

“So?” Blaise demanded. “You’re not going to say anything?”

Draco wanted the floor to swallow him.

“Tell me you didn’t mean it,” Blaise said. He sounded, for the first time Draco had probably ever heard him, genuinely panicked. There was a frantic edge to his eyes. Draco had never seen him look like that before. Even when Blaise had first told Draco he loved him that time on New Year’s, he had been so steady, so certain of himself.

“Blaise, I—“

“Just tell me it was some drunk rambling that you want to forget, and we can just put it behind us and move on.”

“I…” The words were there but he couldn’t form them.

_I love you. I always have. I was a fucking idiot before to not tell you, a scared, pathetic coward, and now every time I’m near you, I want to rip out a lung._

Blaise watched him, waiting.

“Blaise, I was drunk.”

“Oh.” He had been expecting to see relief on Blaise’s face, but no. This was so much worse. Hurt shattered across Blaise’s face like a shard of glass, and it was just like that New Year’s all over again. Draco felt like he was bleeding out all over the floor.

“So everything you said,” Blaise said quietly. "You didn’t mean any of it?”

Draco couldn’t even look at him. “I was drunk, I didn’t know what I was saying. If I did, I never would have—“

“I get it” Blaise interrupted. He wasn’t looking at Draco either. His body was utterly rigid, back hunched, tense, like he was swallowing the force of a blow.

“Blaise, I’m so sorry,” Draco mumbled, but it felt limp, like a bouquet of trampled flowers. “I didn’t— you know how I get when I—”

“It’s fine,” Blaise snapped. Draco did look at him then, and he saw the exact moment Blaise’s face shuttered into something blank and hard and impenetrable. “You were drunk, Draco. I get it. We all say things we wish we hadn’t.”

Draco flinched, bodily, at that.

“But you don’t—“ Fuck, he was making this all so much worse. “That’s all in the past right? You and Harry—“

“Harry and I are _fine_ ,” Blaise cut in. He looked so tired. “Let’s just pretend like it didn’t happen, OK? We’ll forget it.”

“Yes,” Draco said, desperately. “Yeah, I— of course. It’s already forgotten.”

Blaise pushed his food away from him and pulled back his stool. He’d barely touched his breakfast. “Look, I think I’m going to go back to bed,” he said. “This hangover is making me feel like shit. You can stay, if you want. Harry would want you to. He really likes you, you know.”

Draco found himself raising, too, helplessly, like he might be able to stop him from going somehow. “I like him too,” he admitted.

Blaise smiled, ever so slightly, and the sight of it honest to God broke Draco’s heart. “Huh,” he said. “Well, that’s brilliant. The world must be coming to a fucking end.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know it's been ages since an update! Unfortunately sometimes real life stuff gets in the way but please don't give up on this story just yet, she's still being updated... just slightly slower than I intitially anticipated!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry tries to intervene, which goes just about as well as expected.

Moments like these were usually Harry’s favourite. Blaise, curled in his bed, half naked and twisted in the sheets, Blaise’s cheek nestled against Harry’s shoulder so that Harry could feel the slight tickle of his eyelashes with every drowsy blink.

They’d been out the night before at Blaise’s insistence —  another wanky, pretentious charity gala hosted for and by the wizarding elite — and they’d both drank one too many highly overpriced Firewhisky in order to get through it. Of course, that had led to them being joyfully shitfaced, which had in turn led to some pretty fervent fucking.

In hindsight, it was easy to see this for what it was: a distraction, and not a very artful one, at that. Sex with Blaise usually encompassed a whole three act production of light-hearted sniping, teasing and scathing banter, but last night, Blaise had been suspiciously quiet. Every time Harry would pull away slightly to say something, to check he was OK, Blaise would swiftly shut him up with a kiss. A “ _I’m fine, kiss me,”_ or a _“do you want to talk, or do you want me to blow you?”_ And, well. Who was Harry to argue with that?

Now, with nothing but an early morning hangover soberly laying between them, the reality was pretty much unavoidable. Something was up with Blaise, and Harry was absolutely going to find out what.  

“Hey,” Harry said. He reached out to run a finger down the sharp line of Blaise’s jaw. He watched Blaise’s eyelids flicker momentarily, but remain closed. Harry frowned. The fucker was actually pretending to still be asleep in order to avoid a conversation.

“ _Hey_ ,” Harry repeated, and flicked him hard against the forehead.

“Go away,” Blaise grumbled, and attempted to bury himself under the duvet.

“Nope, no, this is happening,” Harry said, and using the same annoying tactic that Fred and George used to use on him and Ron on Christmas mornings, when they got tired of waiting for the whole house to wake up to open presents, he took the corner of the duvet that Blaise was huddled under, and he flung it across the bed.

“Are you fucking kidding me— Harry! What the hell? It’s cold!”

“We need to talk” Harry said.

“ _Now?_ ” Blaise demanded. “It’s—” he turned dramatically to the small clock on the bedside table, “—not even 9am, for the love of Merlin.”

“I know you were already awake,” Harry rolled his eyes. “You weren’t doing that little snuffling thing you do when you’re asleep.”

“I do not _snuffle_ ,” Blaise glared.

“Course you do,” Harry said easily. “It’s cute.”

“For fuck sake,” Blaise grumbled. He viciously tugged a pillow out from underneath Harry and crossed his arms around it, defensively. He didn’t attempt to lie back down, though, so Harry deemed it a win. “Well, go on then,” Blaise waved a hand. “Out with it.”

Harry sighed and pulled himself up onto his elbow to fumble blindly for his glasses, which had been haphazardly discarded halfway across the bed sometime during the night before. With them on, he could see Blaise’s discomfort in perfect clarity; the little wrinkle that formed when his brow was furrowed, his clenched fist against the sheets, the little groove on his bottom lip from where he’d been gnawing. 

“Blaise,” Harry said softly. “I want to talk about what’s wrong.”

"What's wrong? Well currently my boyfriend is being a huge pain in the arse."

"Blaise."

“Nothing’s wrong,” Blaise huffed. It was a swift and efficient lie, the same way he always did. Harry wondered if he even realised he was lying anymore. “I’m fine.”

“Fine,” Harry repeated dubiously, and Blaise glared at him. “You barely said a single word last night.”

“Not all of us like to chatter our way through every round of sex like we’re a presenter on a fucking CBBC show, you know.”

“Not just to me,” Harry said. “You barely spoke to Draco.”

He watched Blaise’s jaw stiffen ever so slightly. “That’s not true,” Blaise said. “Draco and I talked several times throughout the evening.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Oh, give over,” he said. “You were acting like strangers.”

It would have better, Harry thought, had Draco and Blaise been actively hostile towards one another. That way, at least, there could have at least been an eruption to this tension, something tangible they could have addressed rather than the agonisingly slow simmer that everyone in their proximity was forced to endure. Instead, when Harry and Blaise had bumped into Draco at that shitty charity gala the night before, the two of them had been nothing but painfully, achingly civil to one another. They’d exchanged pleasantries. They’d asked after each other’s families. They’d talked about the _weather._ It wasn’t until Harry had snuck outside to call Ron and recount the scene that he’d finally started to understand the situation.

“Mate,” Ron had laughed when Harry explained. “That’s how posh people fight.”

“What?” Harry had asked, dumbstruck.

“Well it’s not like they’re exactly gonna break out into fisticuffs, are they?” Ron said. “When they’re being all nice and stuff? Asking about inane shit, like— their new conservatory installments or, like, summers in France or whatever? That’s when they’re properly going at it. Think about it. Thinly veiled insults under the guise of courtesy? It’s, like, rich people 1.01.”

Harry had been doubtful, but then he’d gone back inside to find Blaise and Draco discussing, in bland, excruciating detail, the new hydrangeas Draco’s mother was having installed and the reality had dawned on him. Ron was right. Something was very, very wrong. 

“I spoke to Pansy last night,” Harry said carefully. He’d rehearsed this part in his head, but it was different saying it out loud, now, with Blaise coiled up tensely beside him, adamantly avoiding his gaze. “Thing is, Draco’s not doing so good either.”

That got Blaise’s attention. His eyes narrowed, sharp enough to draw blood.

“And since when did you and Pansy become Thelma and fucking Louise?”

“Since apparently you and Draco lost the ability to be in the same room at the same time without being weird.”

Something hard shuttered in Blaise’s face. He recognised that look from when they were at school. Back when they were still distant rivals, Blaise had always seemed aloof and unknowable to Harry; he never smiled back then, never laughed, never so much as seemed to express an opinion on something that wasn’t droll distaste. He wasn’t like Draco, who bled venom from every pore every time he entered Harry’s proximity. He’d always seemed detatched. Cold.

Of course, that was before Harry got to learn what every subtle arch of his eyebrow meant, every tiny quirk of his lip. Harry had since become something of an expert in reading the minute details of Blaise’s expressions, but it was only in this moment that it occurred to Harry the reason for this; that it was because Blaise had _allowed_ him to. That Blaise had let himself be known, which was apparently something that could be completely reversible at will. Now, Blaise’s face was hard and unreadable, and Harry realised for the first time in a long time, that he didn’t have a fucking clue what was going through Blaise’s head.

“Don’t talk about things you don’t understand,” Blaise said, icy and dismissive.

“Then help me to understand,” Harry said. He sat up and took Blaise’s hand in his. Harry had always marvelled about how impossibly soft Blaise’s were. He’d known, abstractly, that Blaise had never done an ounce of labour in his life, but there was knowing something in theory and then there was running his fingertips over across the unblemished lines of Blaise’s palm, the soft skin over his knuckles. Harry’s own hands, he knew, were scarred and stained from a lifetime of sloppy spell work, from scrapping for everything he had in order to survive. It was funny, despite this, how naturally their fingers entwined. “Blaise.”

“Harry,” Blaise echoed, sitting up. “Drop it.”

“Thing is, babe,” Harry said now, slowly. “I kind of can’t drop it. I wish I could, but, you see… I love you? So I can’t.”

“Oh fuck you,” Blaise exhaled, closing his eyes. He viciously snatched his hand away, like a child throwing the toys from his pram. “Fuck you for trying to use that against me, as if— if that’s something to lord over me.”

“Lord over you?” Harry repeated. “What are you talking about?

“Poor little Blaise Zabini, never had anyone to care about him, right?” Blaise continued. “What, you think just because you say something like that, that you’re entitled to something from me?”

“No,” Harry frowned. “No, fucking— Merlin, Blaise. Of course I don’t think that.” 

“Then what do you want me from me?” Blaise asked. He sounded genuinely baffled. Sometimes Harry wished he could go back in time and personally punch every single person that Blaise had encountered throughout his childhood, straight in the face. He knew what it was, to grow up in a loveless home. The difference between the two of them, however, was that nobody had ever turned up to Blaise Zabini’s door at the age of ten to whisk him away from that whole mess. Blaise was still knee deep in it.

“I’m not saying it to... to _manipulate_ you,” Harry said. “I’m saying it because it’s true. And because I’m worried about you.”

“And Draco,” Blaise said, and Harry involuntarily flinched.

“Yeah, you’re not subtle,” Blaise scoffed, swinging his legs over the side of the bed to pull on some clothes. Harry didn’t even need to see his face to know that self-satisfaction was curling its way across his expression. “Neither of you are. Let’s not pretend that this doesn’t have just as much to do with your feelings for him as it does with me.”

“Well,” Harry snapped, “what about yours?”

Blaise’s head whipped around with a glare. “My what?”

“Your feelings. For Draco.”

“If you’re implying something, just come out and say it.” 

Harry started to feel the first threads of his patience starting to unravel. “Look, I know you like to run around pretending to be all elusive and shit, but you’re not actually fooling anyone. Maybe if you and Draco—”

“—Oh I can’t wait to hear _this—_ ”

“He's your best mate! If you actually just tried communicating like adults—”

“And here I was trying to perfect my interpretive dance!—” 

“Will you _just—_ Merlin!” Harry took a deep breath and tried to calm down. He hadn’t wanted to do things this way, to have Blaise feel like he was backed up into a corner, and yet here they were. Snarling at each other like they were back at school.

“All I’m saying,” Harry said carefully, “is that Draco’s obviously hurting just as much as you.”

“Oh?” Blaise laughed. “So your suggestion is… what? I call him up, talk things through the Proper Gryffindor Way, like how you talked things out with Ginny? Because that went so well for the two of you, didn’t it? Remind me again, how is the Girl Weasley? Ah, yes, you wouldn’t know, would you? Since she always seems to be suspiciously away from the Weasley home whenever you come to town.”

“Leave Ginny out of this,” Harry said through gritted teeth.

“It’s not nice, is it,” Blaise snapped, “when someone sticks their nose into things that don’t concern them?”

“You can’t actually believe that this doesn’t concern me,” Harry said.

“You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about!” Blaise exploded. “If you did, you would never ask me to try to— _again—_ ” 

He trailed off, visibly shaking, and something lurched in Harry's stomach. He'd misstepped, Harry realised. But where, exactly, he wasn't sure.

“Blaise,” Harry said quietly. He reached for Blaise’s hand again, and this time Blaise actually let him take it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. I don’t know what’s going on between the two of you. But whatever it is, it doesn’t change anything with us. You know how I feel about you. About both of you. You know that right?”

Blaise didn’t say anything. He looked away, jaw set. Something about the motion made Harry’s chest tighten. Blaise muttered something, but it was too quiet for Harry to hear.

“What was that?” Harry asked.

“I said,” Blaise shook his head. “I said it doesn’t matter. What I feel. He doesn’t feel the same.”

“What do you mean?” Harry questioned. It was such a ridiculous statement that he was sure his face was doing something comical. Draco looked at Blaise like he hung the moon. Anyone with eyeballs could see it.

Blaise still hadn’t looked at him. “He doesn’t— it’s just me. That feels this.”

 _It isn’t just you._ It was right on the tip of Harry’s tongue but for some reason he couldn’t make himself say it. He’d known it for some time, now. This thing between the three of them. He’d been reluctant to acknowledge it before, but now it seemed like this thread that ran between them was slowly strangling them all to death. It would have been selfish, Harry thought, to burden Blaise with his own feelings in this moment, when he already had so much to carry. Instead, he just squeezed his hand.

“Blaise,” Harry frowned. “You can’t honestly believe that.”

“Of course I believe it,” Blaise said. “He told me to my face.”

And oh— _Fuck_ , Harry thought. This was about a million times worse than he’d realised.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys use their words!

“Get in, Draco,” Harry said, as he pulled up in a shitty, rusting, hand-me-down Toyota. Terrible muggle music blared from the radio. Draco peered at him from over the top of his sunglasses.

“How very Regina George of you,” Draco said, flatly. He didn’t bother to stop where he was pointedly walking along the pavement, shoulders hunched tensely against the wind.

Harry’s car stubbornly rumbled beside him.

“I’m not fucking around Draco,” Harry sighed. The car behind blared its horn aggressively, and Harry stuck a hand out of the window to flip them off. He was blocking a one way street, but seemed largely unbothered by that fact. “And take your time, I guess. I can wait here all day.”

Draco rolled his eyes. He’d left his house halfway through a Gilmore Girls marathon because he’d run out of Ben and Jerry’s Cookie Dough. He was wearing the comfiest, least flattering jumper he owned and a beanie that made him look like a Smurf. He wasn’t in the mood for conversation, least of all from The Boy Who Didn’t Know When To Shut Up.

“Can’t,” Draco said. “It’s, like, the first rule of Stranger Danger, remember? Don’t get into cars with weird men.”

“Draco,” Harry sighed. “Please. Could you try to not be difficult for once in your entire existence?”

Draco paused dramatically, and then stuck out his bottom lip. “But where’s the fun in that?”

He was about to carry on walking, but that was when the back window rolled down to reveal an extremely unimpressed looking Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger sat in the back seat. Draco actually flinched in surprise at the sight of them, right before cringing inwardly. There was acting like a surly brat to Harry Potter, and then there was doing so in front of his Gryffindor friends, who already had a lifetime of justifiable reasons to hate him. They were both watching him in varying degrees of unamusement. 

“Alright Malfoy?” Weasley nodded. Draco felt himself flush in embarrassment.

“Weasley,” Draco said, and then, after a moment’s hesitation. “Hello Hermione.”

“Draco,” Granger replied politely. “You look well.” She was, as always, the embodiment of grace, and in that moment Draco found himself reliving every foul word that had passed between them.

“Look,” Weasley said, clearing his throat. “Do us a favour and get in the car, yeah? We’re going to be late.”

“Late?” Draco repeated dubiously, before common sense caught up with him. “Actually, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”

Ron waved his hand in the air as if to say, _see, Harry? I tried._

“Ignore him,” Harry told Ron. “He’s just taking the piss. Aren’t you Draco?”

“I’m not taking the piss,” Draco said.

“That’s what he says when he’s taking the piss. Draco,” Harry huffed. “Please just get in the car. We need to talk.”

The car behind let out another vehement blare. Harry’s eyes didn’t leave him.

“I don’t want to talk,” Draco said. “I’m busy.”

“Busy,” Harry repeated sceptically. “Yeah, you sure look like you’ve got a wild night ahead of you.” He leant over the window to inspect Draco’s Sainsbury’s bag. “Is that Cookie Dough and— _Pretty Woman?_ Seriously? Who even buys DVDs anymore?”

“OK,” Draco glared. “First of all, Pretty Woman is a classic.”

“Look, you can get in the car and we can have this conversation in private, or I can pull over and we can have it right here, in the middle of the street, with my friends and half of Hackney borough watching. Either way, this conversation is going to happen. What will it be?”

Draco stared at him, begrudgingly impressed. He glanced back at Ron and Hermione, who’s expressions had shifted to stifling laughter. Draco was smart enough to know when he’d been out-maneuvered. “Are you _sure_ you weren’t supposed to be Slytherin?” He asked, a little wondrously.

“Draco.”

“Alright, alright, I’m getting in,” Draco sighed, and he begrudgingly climbed into the passenger seat, just as the car behind gave another vehement blare of their horn.

“So,” he said, into the awkward silence. Only the distant crackle of Harry’s shitty radio hung between them. With the door shut and the car moving, it became abundantly clear that there was going to be absolutely no opportunity to flee. “Nice day for a kidnapping, huh?”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Harry said, but Draco caught the curve of his mouth as he signalled the car behind him.

“Well am I allowed to ask where we’re going?” Draco said. “Or is that forbidden? I’ve never been kidnapped before.”

“Neville’s playing an open mic at a muggle bar,” Hermione said lightly, from the back. “We’re all going to support him.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Draco blinked. It was only because it was coming from Hermione that he didn’t think he was being pranked. “Neville? As in… Neville Longbottom?”

“The one and only.”

“No, absolutely not. Pull the car over, I have to draw a line somewhere.”

“Too bad,” Harry said. His elbow was propped against the window like some kind of 1960’s boy racer. Draco absolutely did not find it attractive. “Maybe had you answered my numerous calls we could have done this another way, but since you insist on being so stubborn and infuriating— ”

“So that’s what this is? Revenge?”

“Don’t be so cynical,” Harry said. “Am I not allowed to just want to see you? I missed you.”

That silenced Draco. He turned in his seat, face warming, feeling appropriately chastised. Harry had this infuriating way of weaponizing his sincerity and Draco hadn’t quite learnt a defense against it yet. He squirmed in his seat, conscious of Hermione and Ron in the back, listening to their every word.

“Alright, I get it,” Draco sighed, after a moment, turning to look out of the window mournfully. He looked down at the bag of sugary treats he’d bought himself for his personal pity party. His ice cream was going to melt, and all because Draco hadn’t quite learnt how to say no to Harry Potter yet.

“It’ll be OK, Draco,” Harry said, as if he’d read Draco’s mind. “Julia Roberts will still be there when you get home. Now, stop pouting. And put your seatbelt on.”

 

#

 

They pulled up by some back alley Camden pub. Ron and Hermione scrambled out first to handle the parking ticket and, Draco assumed, to avoid having to hear anymore of their bickering, which had been pretty much consistent for the duration of the journey. With the two of them gone, though, the sudden quiet felt very heavy. Draco slumped back in his seat and stared out of the window. It was raining, which — Draco thought — felt oddly fitting somehow. He felt like he was in the third act of a shitty romcom. Julia Roberts, eat your fucking heart out.

“Blaise is here, isn’t he?” Draco asked.

“Should be,” Harry said. He was fiddling with the heat, which probably hadn’t been functional since 1973, when this rust bucket of a car was first constructed. Draco tried to picture Blaise here, slumped against the peeling leather seats infused with second-hand smoke, but couldn’t. “He texted me to say he was on time. I reckon he’s just about getting his ear talked off by Luna right about now. She’s really taken to him.”

A particularly large droplet of rain hit the window screen and trickled downward. Draco followed the motion, mostly so that he didn’t have to look at Harry.

“He isn’t going to want to see me,” he said quietly.

“Bollocks,” Harry said, without hesitating. “He misses you.”

“He can’t stomach being around me.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Harry said.

Draco turned his head to find Harry watching him gravely. It was unfair, really, how pretty Harry was, even in this drab, grey light. His nose was a little pink from the cold, and there were specks of rain on his glasses. Draco felt inexhaustibly fond.

“I know you miss us too,” Harry said simply, and something snagged in Draco’s chest. _Us._ The expression might as well have been a hot iron in his gut.

The thing was, it wasn’t just that he missed Blaise or Harry. It was that everytime someone said something particularly idiotic within Draco’s presence, he would automatically look to his side, expecting to receiving a knowing side eye in response, only there was no one looking back. There were no ridiculous texts at 3am dissecting the latest episode of Drag Race. There were no impromptu drop-ins with armfuls of Chinese food, and terrible Netflix suggestions. There were no passive aggressive notes left on his fridge reminding him to eat healthily. The past few weeks had been almost numbingly lonely.

He’d picked up the phone a few times to call Blaise, but everytime he did, he’d think of Blaise’s face that day. The visceral crack in his expression. His voice, looping over and over again in Draco’s mind: _we all say things we wish we hadn’t._

“Are you mad at me?” Draco asked abruptly. It occurred to him that, had their places been reversed, had someone done to Blaise what Draco had done, he probably would have been. Harry didn’t seem mad, though. He just seemed tired.

“I was,” Harry said. “Furious even.” He paused, hands tapping nervously against the wheel. “Wanna know something funny?”

“What?”

“It’s why I brought Hermione and Ron with me. I thought I’d need them to stop me from tearing you a new one.”

Draco snorted back a laugh. “Seriously?”

“Ron offered to restrain me.”

“He doesn’t have the upper body strength,” Draco said automatically, and then paused, the reality of Harry’s words sobering him. “You're calm enough that Ron’s buggered off. What changed?”

“Well,” Harry said, after a beat. “I saw you, I guess. I realised you’ve clearly been suffering just as much as he has.”

Draco took a moment to digest that. It stung a little more than he’d been expecting. “Alright,” he said, after a moment. “Touché.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be an insult, Draco.”

“I know.” He shifted uncomfortably. “Still not great to hear though.”

“Look,” Harry said, lightly. He was good at that. Making everything seem like it was simple. “No pressure or anything, but for curiosity’s sake, are we actually going to go inside at any point?”

“I don’t know,” Draco said. He looked towards the door, where Blaise was probably enjoying the evening with his new friends. He wondered what they would be talking about. If they would have in-jokes that Draco didn’t understand. “I’m fine with just staying out here forever.”

Harry just raised an eyebrow, like he could see straight through the core of him, and Draco rolled his eyes.

“Alright, fine. We’ll go in. Will you walk in with me?” The last part slipped from him almost involuntarily, and Draco found himself wincing. It felt silly to ask, juvenile, even, but the truth was that Draco didn’t know if he could do it alone.

“Course I will,” Harry said. Again, there was no hesitation. Just a slight tilt of his head towards the pub and that magnanimous little smile of his. “Though that will, of course, eventually mean getting out of this car.”

“Are you sure we can’t just stay in here until we die?”

“As fun as that sounds,” Harry smiled.

He was out of the car before Draco could protest, walking around to the passenger’s seat and holding the door open for Draco like some kind of ridiculous Disney prince. After a moment, Draco succumbed and took the hand Harry was holding out to him, trying to hold the fierce flushing in his cheeks.

“Such a gentleman,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“You’re welcome.” Harry smiled. He watched Draco silently, as if trying to read him, then after a moment he huffed and unwound the scarf from his neck. Before Draco could protest, it was being draped over him.

“Uh—” Draco protested.

“Just accept it, Draco,” Harry said. “You look extra pitiful when you’re cold.”

Draco glared halfheartedly, but something in the gesture made him feel warm inside. “Blaise is rubbing off on you,” Draco said. “You’re turning into a mother hen.”

The corner of Harry’s mouth lifted a little, and he tilted his head thoughtfully. “Not many people get to see that part of him, you know?”

“I know.” Draco fiddled with the tassels on the end of Harry’s scarf. “You do, though.”

“Yeah,” he said. “And so do you.”

“We’re special, I guess.”

“We are,” Harry agreed.

Draco glanced towards the pub door, the gravity of the situation beginning to weigh on him. He felt wrong-footed, unsure of how this would go. Historically, it was always Blaise to wave the white flag between them. To cave first and come to Draco when shit hit the fan. For maybe the first time in their friendship, Draco didn’t know what to expect. He had no idea what Blaise would say, if he would even say anything. Maybe they would just continue the passive aggressive pissing match they’d been playing these days. The artful not-talking talking. Maybe Draco had left it too late. Maybe there was no going back at all.

“Harry,” Draco said. “I really fucked up.”

Harry’s hands moved to rest on the lapels of Draco’s coat. Draco wondered when it was exactly that this sort of affection became easy to them.

“I know,” Harry said. 

“I don’t know if I can fix it.”

“You can,” Harry told him. 

“But what if I can’t?”

Harry leant forward then. Draco had pictured this moment before, was the thing. In his head, kissing Harry had always been some dramatic, height-of-the-moment thing, a result of years of pent up tension finally reaching boiling point. His first kiss with Blaise had been like that. They’d been bickering, always bickering, and Draco has seen the challenge in his eyes, the teasing taunt of his mouth that had meant he didn’t think Draco would. Kissing Blaise that first time had been rash and bordering the line of vicious, and it had quickly developed into something as competitive as it was addictive.

But this. He hadn’t counted on the— the _softness_ of it. The way Harry nudged into the kiss, nose-first. The way Harry’s fingers found the nape of Draco’s neck and held him there, steady. The saccharine sweet taste of him from those disgusting fizzy sweets Harry kept in his car and ate by the bulk. Next time they argued, Draco would think of this: the fan of Harry’s eyelashes against his cheek as he leant in, the small hum that seemed to come involuntarily from the back of Harry’s throat, the way his lips curled ever so lightly against Draco’s, as if he couldn’t resist smiling.

Draco leant back, feeling a little like the world had been knocked out from beneath him. 

“Stop freaking out,” Harry said. He kept hold of Draco’s hands. It was incredibly distracting. Draco sincerely wondered how Blaise ever got anything done, having known what it felt like to be kissed like that.

“I’m not freaking out,” Draco protested.

“I can feel you shaking,” Harry said, eyebrow raised.

“That’s because it’s cold out here and—” He trailed off when he realised Harry was laughing, and thumped him hard against the arm. “Fuck you! You kissed me! _Here_ of all places— what the fuck?”

“Well you kissed me back?” Harry said.

It dawned on Draco that he was being made fun of, but he felt oddly OK with it. He buried his face in the grove of Harry’s shoulder, and Harry’s arms automatically wrapped around him.

“Do you think he’ll be mad?” Draco asked.

“Probably,” Harry said.

“You don’t sound too concerned.”

“I reckon he’ll forgive you, if you kiss him like you just kissed me.”

There was no punchline. Draco leant back to look at him, but Harry was being serious. How did he manage to say shit like that with a straight face? Draco felt his cheeks start to flush. 

“And it doesn’t bother you?” Draco asked. He couldn’t quite say it. _Me and Blaise_. _You and me._

“No,” Harry said, with no hesitation. “Does it bother _you_?”

Draco’s instinct was to say something cutting and flippant but Harry’s arms were around him, and he was watching him patiently. He was standing out in the cold with him, when all of his friends were already inside. He had driven all that way to pick Draco up, even after weeks of radio silence.

“At first, maybe,” Draco said after a moment.

“And now?”

“Now I pretty much can’t go so much as a fucking hour without thinking about the two of you.”

Harry’s grin was damn right impish. “Yeah?” He grinned, leaning forward.

“Yeah.”

“Me too,” Harry said. 

Draco’s gut gave a delightful swoop, and he leant forward to kiss him again, just because he could. The feeling didn’t lessen any the second time. 

“We can’t stay out here forever,” Draco said, but Harry’s fingers were still brushing the tips of Draco’s hair right at the nape of his neck. He’d noticed that Hermione and Ron had not returned. No doubt they were inside, gossiping with the rest of the Gryffindors over terribly made beer. Maybe they were watching them from the window. Draco found that the thought didn’t bother him too much.

“Nah,” Harry said. “But we can stay out here a little while longer.”

 

#

 

Draco was pink-cheeked, fingers prickling from the cold, by the time they made their way inside the gaudy little pub. Harry looped his arm around Draco’s as they entered, which was an odd gesture — it made Draco feel a little like a 1700s damsel being escorted to her carriage — but there was also something disconcertingly steadying about it. He found himself leaning into the weight of Harry’s warmth almost instinctively.

“Merlin,” Draco said. “Part of me hoped you were joking.”

Harry had neglected to mention the fact that half of the Gryffindor alumni was going to be in attendance. He spotted more of a handful of familiar faces. There were a couple of other Weasley’s, Seamus and Dean, The Patil sisters, Lee Jordan and — Merlin—  Longbottom, among others. 

They found Blaise slumped in a corner booth with Lovegood and Granger, the table already littered with half-finished beers.

For a moment, Draco just watched Blaise from afar. He seemed to be deep in conversation with Lovegood, just as Harry had predicted, and his nose was wrinkled in genuine amusement while she gesticulated wildly about something or other. It was an odd sight, seeing them being genuinely friendly towards one another, and Draco felt a pang of envy. After a moment, Blaise must have felt eyes on him, because he turned in Draco’s direction. Something hard flickered over his face, but he stood up and squeezed his way out of the booth and over to where Harry and Draco were hovering.

He kissed Harry quickly, then turned to Draco, arms crossed.

“This is the last place I expected to see you,” Blaise said.

“Likewise,” Draco said, with a raise of his eyebrows.

“What do you mean,” Blaise said. He flung his arms in the air dramatically, like he was in a Shakespearean play. “These are my people now!”

There were drunken cheers around him, but Blaise’s expression remained suspiciously placid. He was sober, Draco realised. Agonisingly so, judging by his expression. It was probably for the best. Draco knew they all needed to be in their right minds for this conversation, if they were going to make it out in one piece.

“Your people,” Draco repeated dubiously.

He glanced around the table. Dean and Weasley were seeing how many disposable straws they could fit in Seamus’ mouth. Neville was tuning an honest to God guitar, like he actually intended to play it.

When he looked back, he found Blaise’s gaze had dropped to where Harry’s arm was casually draped around Draco. There was something conflicted on his face, but when he noticed Draco looking, it immediately straightened into something placid.

“How’s your mother?” Blaise asked, reflexively. It was his natural well-bred instinct kicking in to be polite and well-mannered. Beside him, Draco caught Harry’s eyes rolling skyward.  

“She’s fine,” Draco said.

“And Lucius?”

“He’s well. Recently discovered golfing with muggles. Very lucrative circles, apparently.”

“How interesting.”

“Quite.”

“Christ,” Harry muttered under his breath.

Blaise’s eyes snapped back up, all at once narrow and assessing. He smiled again, but it was vacant.

Draco sighed, dropping the facade. “Look, Blaise. Can we talk?”

“We’re talking right now,” Blaise said.

God, he could be difficult sometimes. It was honestly commendable. Draco almost found himself smiling against his will. “I mean in private,” Draco said. “Away from this circus.”

And there was the first crack in Blaise’s facade. His eyes immediately sharpened, and this, this Draco could deal with. Cold, aloof Blaise was near impenetrable. But angry Blaise? This Draco could handle.

“Don’t be a prick, Draco,” Blaise warned.

“Blaise,” Harry protested.

“Actually Harry, you can fuck off too.”

“Hey—”

“Maybe leave this to the grown ups,” Draco told Harry.

“ _Maybe_ don’t talk to my boyfriend like he’s a child,” Blaise snapped.

“Wait, I’m getting whiplash here,” Harry blinked. “Who is it that you’re even mad at?”

“Neither of you. Both of you. Fuck!” Blaise threw up his arms. “I need some air.”

He stormed off before either one of them could stop him, leaving Draco and Harry staring idiotically at each other. Harry closed his eyes momentarily. “I think we need to seriously talk through the logistics of this relationship,” he said.

“Yeah,” Draco snorted. “No shit.”

“I’m gonna—”

“No,” Draco said. He took a deep breath, and when Harry smiled at him, something lightened in his chest. “I got this.”

 

#

 

“What’s with the arm thing?” Blaise asked, as soon as Draco had rounded the corner to follow him outside. He had his coat pulled tightly around him and he was wearing gloves that Draco had never seen before. That, alone, was enough to pull Draco up short. Draco knew Blaise’s wardrobe inside out; he was constantly loaning items from it. That he now owned these gloves that Draco had never seen before made him wonder at what else could have changed in the few weeks they’d been apart.

“What?” Draco asked.

“His _arm_ ,” Blaise repeated, through gritted teeth. “Around your arm. Unless you’re about to skip around the maypole, I don’t get it. What— Are you doing it to piss me off? Is it supposed to bother me or something?”

“Does it?” Draco asked, curiously. He felt oddly calm for some reason. It was like staring down a giant tsunami wave. The impact was inevitable, at this point. All that was left was to drown.

“Does what?”

Draco stepped forward and he watched Blaise track the motion, cautiously.

“Does it bother you?” Draco repeated.

“Is this some kind of game?”

“No.”

“Why did you even come here? And is that Harry’s scarf?” He frowned, as if finally taking Draco in properly. “Actually, don’t answer that. Of course it fucking is.”

“Well,” Draco said. “To be honest, I was minding my own business when Harry practically stuck a bag over my head and shoved me in the boot of his car. Which is hideous, by the way, I’m surprised it’s even allowed to be on the road. Tell me you don’t actually let him drive you around in that thing.”

“Of course not,” Blaise said, pulling a face. “That car wouldn’t be fit to transfer a corpse.”

They stared at each other, neither quite willing to give into the urge to laugh. Draco had missed this; the instinctive way they’d fall into their rhythm, even if it was against their will.

“I’m tired, Draco,” Blaise said eventually.

“I know.”

“I have been so goddamn angry at you that I can barely breathe at times.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying you fucking know, it doesn’t make it better.”

“OK,” Draco said. Instead, he reached forward and Blaise automatically met him halfway. This part had always been easy for them. Draco’s chin automatically found the groove in Blaise’s shoulder, and Blaise’s arms went around him. Draco felt like he could finally breathe again, and he felt Blaise relax into him in the same breath. Something about the gesture was enough to almost make Draco cry.

“I lied,” Draco said. It came out muffle against Blaise’s jacket.  “Before. When you asked me if I meant what I said, and I told you I was drunk. I lied.”

Blaise pulled back ever so slightly. “What?”

“I mean, I _was_ drunk. I don’t even remember having that conversation. But what I said to you was true. And I knew it was true, even when I told you it wasn’t.”

“Draco,” Blaise warned. “Please don’t.”

“I was scared,” Draco said, and now that he’d started talking, he couldn’t stop for some reason. It was all unravelling from him. “You were both so happy together and I didn’t want to ruin it. I thought I could just shut up and let it happen, but every time I saw you together, it was like— it was like someone twisting a knife in me which, yes, is very dramatic and a little cliche, but it’s true. I couldn’t even— it was too much, just to be in a room with the two of you. But then I realised that, actually, it’s worse. It’s so much fucking worse without either of you around.”

“Draco,” Blaise pleaded.

“I fucked up,” he said. “I know that. I fucked up the first time you told me, and I fucked up again. I’m sorry. I know I’ve missed my chance. I would get it if you didn’t want to— try, or whatever with me, but either way I want to make this better. I think— I think we could work, maybe? All three of us, I mean. Me, you and Harry. And yeah, that’s fucking weird to say but— ”

“Draco, _stop_.” Blaise snapped, and Draco fell silent. Blaise stepped back, physically putting space between them. Draco watched him for a moment as he steadied his breathing, fists clenching and unclenching a few times.

“I need to think this through,” Blaise said eventually.

“OK,” Draco said slowly. That hadn’t exactly been the answer he was expecting.

“This. You. All of it. I need some time to digest it all.”

“Alright,” Draco nodded, though he didn’t exactly know what to do with that. In all honesty, he’d been preparing himself for a flat out no. 

“What,” Blaise said, “did you need an answer right this second?”

“No, I mean.” He cleared his throat, awkwardly. “Take your time.”

Blaise rolled his eyes. “You’re saying ‘take your time’, but frankly, your face is doing that thing.”

“What thing?”

“It looks like a puckered arsehole, Draco.”

A surprised laugh burst from Draco before he could stop it. At the same time, he looked at Blaise and felt so suddenly and overwhelmingly homesick that he almost wanted to cry.

“I’ve missed you,” Draco said. “So fucking much.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Blaise said quietly. “There were so many times I wanted to call you.”

“Me too.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Blaise asked. “Would we even be having this conversation if it wasn’t for Harry?”

“I was— scared” Draco said. “I still am, OK? I’m, like, opening a vein here, Blaise. You know this is not shit I'm good at.”

Blaise didn’t say anything and Draco looked down at his shoes. “Look, I get it if you don’t want to,” he said, after a beat. “I wouldn’t, if someone had— you know.”

“Broken your heart?” It came out as a laugh, brittle and callous, and Draco flinched.

“Yeah, OK. I deserved that.”

Blaise sighed and shook his head. Almost instinctively, they both glanced back into the pub, where Harry was. Through the window, they could see Harry in conversation with Ron and Neville, but he looked up when he felt their gazes on him. He looked nervous, which was odd in itself. This was the boy that saved the whole wizarding world when he still had pimples, and here he was, visibly nervous because his ears were burning. The absurdity of the situation was almost enough to make Draco smile.

When he turned back, he found Blaise staring at him intensely.

“Do you mean it,” Blaise said quietly.

“Of course,” Draco said instantly.

“Because I honestly don’t— I can’t go through that again. If you were to change your mind this time… I don’t think we could come back from that.”

“I’m not going to change my mind,” Draco said.

“You say that _now,_ but—”

“Blaise,” Draco repeated. He said it slowly, because this was important. He took Blaise’s hand and held it against where his heart was hammering against his chest. “I’m not going to change my mind.”

“Yeah?” He asked.

“Yeah.”

He squeezed Blaise’s hand. “I’ll give you time,” Draco promised. “As long as you need. Whatever you decide— it’s OK. I just wanted you to know. I love you either way.”

“OK,” Blaise nodded, and he squeezed Draco’s hand back.

Draco smiled. “OK.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BONUS:
> 
> “Um, mate.” Ron said, awkwardly clearing his throat. He pointedly kicked Neville under the table, who followed his gaze and then proceeded to choke on a mouthful of lager. “Harry... you know your boyfriend’s out there, like, lovingly holding hands with another bloke, right?”  
> Harry turned his head to look in the direction, and his shoulders slumped with relief. “Merlin,” he said. “ _Finally._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me at rooonan.tumblr.com for more updates!


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